We start this week with Joseph’s investigation into people selling custom patches for the Flipper Zero, a piece of hacking tech that car thieves can now use to break into a wide range of vehicles. After the break, Jason tells us about the new meta in AI slop: making 80s nostalgia videos. In the subscribers-only…
Flock, the surveillance company with automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras in thousands of communities around the U.S., is looking to integrate with a company that makes AI-powered dashcams placed inside peoples’ personal cars, multiple sources told 404 Media. The move could significantly increase the amount of data available to Flock, and in turn its…
If you or someone you know is struggling, The Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To text with a trained helper, text SAVE to 741741. A new lawsuit against OpenAI claims ChatGPT pushed a teen to suicide, and alleges that the chatbot helped him write the first draft of his…
Forty-four attorneys general signed an open letter to 11 chatbot and social media companies on Monday, warning them that they will “answer for it” if they knowingly harm children and urging the companies to see their products “through the eyes of a parent, not a predator.” The letter, addressed to Anthropic, Apple, Chai AI, OpenAI,…
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we have a slightly shorter than usual entry from the gang, with some party pics and musical selections from the night. SAM: We’re all still recovering, processing, and floating…
Last week, we were talking to each other about the fact that we were about to hit the second anniversary of 404 Media. The conversation was about what we should say in this blog post, which obviously led us to try to remember everything that has happened in the last year. “I haven’t considered a…
Scientists have discovered possible hints of an undiscovered world in the solar system—nicknamed “Planet Y”—orbiting about 100 to 200 times farther from the Sun than Earth, according to a new study. The newly proposed planet, assuming it exists, is predicted to be somewhere between Mercury and Earth in scale, which would likely make it detectable…
A man holds an orange and white device in his hand, about the size of his palm, with an antenna sticking out. He enters some commands with the built-in buttons, then walks over to a nearby car. At first, its doors are locked, and the man tugs on one of them unsuccessfully. He then pushes…
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, thinks the internet’s default encyclopedia and one of the world’s biggest repositories of information could benefit from some applications of AI. The volunteer editors who keep Wikipedia functioning strongly disagree with him. The ongoing debate about incorporating AI into Wikipedia in various forms bubbled up again in July, when…
The Department of Defense sent an email to civilian employees Wednesday asking them to sign up for a “volunteer force” that will help both Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection with Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. A job application page says the Department of Defense’s civilian employees would be deployed to ICE…
